September is one of those sneaky months.
Not quite summer, not quite fall.
As I look back over some of the Septembers I’ve spent in this space, and the Septembers out of this space… they were always, oddly, sneaky little transformative months that always ended up revealing a lot.
When I was in undergrad, it was the start of a new year, bustling with energy that I swore I’d be able to sustain for the rest of the year until that proved not true (h a.).
It was a time of moving and shuffling into a new place, (last year being no exception), of feeling on the edge of something but not quite fully in it. Feeling like something is brewing but not knowing exactly what.
Maybe that’s why I love September so much (aside from it being the tip of fall… (; …and my tendency to fall in fall)
because it’s this tumultuous mix of bizarre and beautiful, like a summer salad with raisins, or (whatever selection of fruit white people like to throw into dishes that shouldn’t have fruit in them).
September also feels like a very reflective time for me. When I look back on this space, when I look back at my writing, when I look back on almost 12 years of journaling, I’m hit with a fascination– a fascination in the sheer bits and pieces of reflection I’ve managed to keep up with over the course of my life, but also how, somehow, I’ve committed to mindfully keeping track of those bits and pieces for so long.
Just a few weeks ago I was at home in my childhood bedroom, cleaning things out, going through things, getting lost in stuff from the early 2000’s, but I found my 20-some notebooks & journals which I had been keeping since 2009. And every now and again I’ll sit down and leaf through them and laugh at my seemingly frivolous chronicling of my adventures and at-times obsessions with crushes and dead-end questions and frantic uncertainties and written over-thinking and heartbreak so honest that re-reading it brings those emotions back up from the deep recesses of wherever I repressed them to.
I’ve always told myself that I write to remember.
Because I move fast and I forget, and I want to remind myself of important feelings and epiphanies, learned lessons and small victories.
But a few weeks ago I just had to sit there with my younger self/inner child and say thank you, because those times of tracking Truth and memories were one of the greatest gifts I could ever give my present & future self. It’s somewhat fun, to go back and pseudo-psychoanalyze my past self and see patterns and pick up on trauma and corroborate what I was doing or feeling at the time with what I know now– what an incredible gift that is. Sometimes a painful gift, but a gift nonetheless.
And now I’m here.
Another September , and it feels like it’s taking the shape of Septembers before it, in its own little sneaky way.
strictly stephanie 